Who are Barack Obama's supporters?
Picture an old 1950s era black-and-white zombie movie. The undead rise from their graves, begin lurching forward, arms outstretched, eyes vacant, all murmuring eerily in unison, "Change, change, change ... ."
Except Obama's zombies don't rise from graves. They emerge from high schools and colleges and Hollywood soundstages and media centers.
Much has been made of Obama's appeal to American youth. His hook is emotion and vague idealism, which works well on people loaded with emotion and vague idealism but with little in the way of experience and genuine knowledge. A generation that barely discerns between Bambi and actual rutting deer can't be expected to distinguish charisma from substance.
So teeners and twentysomethings are expected to vote for The Bama in big numbers because (here comes the part nobody wants to admit publicly) it's cool, trendy, chic, sexy to have a black guy for president. It's also a perfect opportunity for the cool, trendy, chic, sexy types to prove to themselves, and to one another, that they're not racist.
But their votes will be offset by the (other part nobody wants to publicly admit) true American racists, salt-of-the-earth folks who will beat their breasts while staunchly declaring their utter lack of prejudice to the pollsters but once they're alone in the voting booth will quietly grab that lever and pull it hard for "Anybody but the Black Guy."
Obama will also get the entertainer vote. Professional emoters, like actors and singers and dancers and millionaire movie moguls who want to fit in with the rest of the emoting clique, tend to approach everything else in life by emoting about it as well: cry for the camera, moan for the microphone, support the guy with the squishy "change" mantra.
Academics and media mavens and environmentalists and all other members of the emoting classes will also board the Obama bandwagon because it's cool, trendy, chic, sexy to be (another truth that can't be uttered in polite society) a Marxist, which they pretend not to be by calling themselves "progressive."
As Obama is an empty suit, John McCain is his haberdashery opposite - the would-be emperor who has no clothes.
For a John McCain mental moment, picture him standing on the stage of a 10,000-seat auditorium. Mingling behind him is every politician's usual gang of power-pimping hangers-on, sycophants, kiss-ups, weasels, and toadies. Now look at the audience and note that the 10,000 seats are filled to overflowing with three people.
John McCain stands for everything and nothing. He's too liberal to attract conservatives, too conservative to please liberals, too big-government power-wielding authoritarian to interest libertarians.
This is because the John McCain philosophy of governance is a gigantic grab bag of fortune cookies stuffed full of utterly unconnected and inconsistent bits and pieces of political chaff.
Pull out a cookie and break it open. "There is a Mexican-American border fence in your future." That will hack off the liberals but it'll capture the hardcore fundamentalist anti-immigrant conservative vote, even though nearly every one of their forbears were illegal immigrants themselves (unless, of course, they can prove that the native peoples of America granted European settlers legal permission to enter their lands).
Crunch another cookie. "Riddle: What fails to curb soft money but succeeds in abridging freedom of speech? Answer: McCain-Feingold campaign-finance reform." That hacked off his conservative base but the emoting progressive née Marxist capitalist-hating libs loved it.
In the end, McCain has his own army of zombies: Republicans who vote Republican because they've always voted Republican because their parents voted Republican even though they couldn't possibly tell you what Republicanism is. (They'll happily finger-tick conservative principles and religious principles and traditional principles and family values but they haven't a clue about actual Republican Party political principles.)
So there's your choice, America: Czar of the Zombies or the Fortune Cookie Candidate.
Garry Reed is a longtime advocate of the libertarian philosophy of non-coercion that espouses personal autonomy and individual responsibility, civil rights and economic liberty, maximum freedom and minimum government. His website is (http://www.freecannon.com).
Correction
The article "Creating Credibility" (see River Cities' Reader Issue 693, July 16-22, 2008) incorrectly stated that senators Dianne Feinstein and Bob Bennett are "co-sponsoring a bill that would require everyone to use touch screens by 2012." The bill actually states that systems using touch screens must provide an independent record by 2012. The Reader regrets this error.
